I keep forgetting the change in climate change.
Fire, floods. What a thing to be living through a climate emergency.
There are mundane adaptations. Office dress codes, for instance. Take it from a person who grew up in the tropics: light, flowy, long-sleeves and trousers are so much better in the heat than short, tight, and sleeveless.
There are more profound adaptations, requiring global, governmental cooperation and enforcement and that have very little to do with individual habits around recycling (which, largely: a scam).
And then there are the courts, which groups of young people are using to assert their rights:
“A Montana judge on Monday sided with young environmental activists who said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil fuel development without considering its effect on the climate.
The ruling following a first-of-its- kind trial in the U.S. adds to a small number of legal decisions around the world that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change.” — NPR
“A judge in Hawaii has rejected a bid by the state's transportation department to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of 14 young people who claim it is violating the state constitution by failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Judge Jeffrey Crabtree in Honolulu ruled on Thursday the youth plaintiffs could pursue their claims that the Hawaii Department of Transportation is shirking its duty to protect the environment by promoting and funding highway projects that lead to more fuel consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions.” — Reuters
This might all be new to some, but it is not new for everyone. The key is in the listening.
Attribution:
Because a year before,
a hurricane reaved its way across this country for the first time
in recorded history.
Tornado or torbellino or something else,
I ask her about the valley’s strange wind. And she laughs, says
that she was calling to ask me the same thing. I don’t know why
I keep forgetting the change in climate change. My grandmother
sighs as the sky darkens to the color of rum. Why I still think
that we’ll have names for all the things that will come.
— from The “Change” in Climate Change by Jacob Shores-Argüello